


Koibito Tsunagi

by japansace



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fluff and Angst, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Slow Burn, genderfluidity, rating will likely change, you don't need to know anything about kitsune i got you fam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-02-07 13:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12841890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/japansace/pseuds/japansace
Summary: “You, uh… You don’t plan on like… eating me, right?”If foxes could look disgusted, then Yuuri certainly did, scrunching his nose up in obvious distaste.“No? Guess I’m safe then.”Yuuri deigned him with a look that roughly translated to “you’re a dumbass.”(Or: Victor Nikiforov is entering the new skating season in a slump. He goes to Japan in hopes of reinvigorating his creative process.But then a kitsune steals his wallet.)





	1. Hello, 110, I'd Like to Report a Robbery? Yes, My Heart Has Been Stolen

**Author's Note:**

> 恋人つなぎ (koibitotsunagi): the act of lovers holding hands with their fingers intertwined.
> 
> I've been sitting on this AU for months (long enough for me to workshop this in a creative writing class if you can believe), and I finally found time between MFA applications to post this. I have _a lot _planned for this fic, so I hope you enjoy~!__

“I can’t fucking believe you.”

Victor couldn’t fucking believe himself either.

Yuri struggled to drag his suitcase over yet another set of gravel steps that led to the onsen, grunting when the wheels caught on the edge of a stair—only to break it loose through sheer force of will. “Why are we here again?”

“Well, _I’m_ here on vacation,” Victor stated, overly cheerful. The bulk of his personality was still taxiing somewhere between St. Petersburg and their connecting flight in Beijing, much like the majority of his luggage. “Why _you’re_ here still eludes me.”

Yuri growled, finally giving in and lobbing his entire bag over his shoulder. “Did you really think I was gonna let you fuck off to god-knows-where Japan right before the season starts?”

“I didn’t _think_ ; I _hoped._ There’s a difference.”

“Well screw you too, asshole.” Yuri charged ahead while Victor idled to slip his sunglasses on, beyond over this apparent survival trek it took just to reach the damn hotel. “And double screw you for getting a room here! Just how much farther is it?”

“Consider it endurance training.” Victor smirked despite himself as he waved a fan indolently before his face. “You could use some more of that anyway.”

“I swear to god, Victor—!”

“Oh, look, there it is.”

The inn was nestled in the Japanese countryside, worn and weathered but still well-loved from the looks of it. A Japanese woman was sweeping just outside the entrance, and upon Victor’s innocuous observation, surveyed them with a distinct air of disinterest.

But then came the growling.

“Makkachin, what has gotten into you?” Victor questioned his companion, tugging him lightly back with the leash.

Before Victor could even consider apologizing, the woman turned back into the inn with a muttered “ _kuso_ ,” followed by a much louder “Otou-san! Okyakusan da yo!” As she slid the screen door shut, Victor couldn’t help but notice that she held a hand to the top of her head, but for what reason, he couldn’t begin to fathom. 

“That was weird,” Yuri stated, deadpan; and it certainly had to be if Yuri felt the need to comment on it. 

“Yeah…” Victor stared down at his dog. “What was that for?”

Makkachin, of course, said nothing, only thumping his tail against the ground as though he had done something good and fully expected to be rewarded for it.

The door clattered open again, this time unveiling an older Japanese man. “Welcome,” he greeted in English, heavily accented but functional. His smile was pulled a little tighter than necessary, Victor thought. “You have reservations?”

“Ah, yes… Two rooms.” Victor pointedly glanced at his teenage companion, hoping visual cues would smooth over any remaining language barrier.

The man nodded. “Follow me please.”

The foyer was modest but lovely all the same. Every groove told a story, every dent, a memory. Victor could easily imagine kids having grown up there—and dogs, if the scratches in the floorboards were anything to go by.

Speaking of…

“Makkachin can stay here, right?”

The innkeeper turned away from his records, slow and deliberate. It was more than a little obvious that he hadn’t caught all of what Victor had said with how fast he was speaking. “I’m sorry?”

“Ah, ehm, my dog.” Victor indicated down to Makkachin. “He can—you allow dogs?”

The man blinked thoughtfully at the animal. “Yes… Dogs okay. But children—my children—very allergic. Be careful.”

“Oh, I see.” Well, that explained the woman’s reaction from earlier. Victor would just have to have Makkachin mind his manners then. “I’ll… be careful.”

Yuri kicked at the ground, not at all adept at formalities even on his best days. “Rooms. Please. _Now_ ,” he bit out, tense, stilted, frame more so as he extended his arm to accept a room key.

But the man took it all in stride, depositing a key into Yuri’s awaiting hand, long-since acclimated to the temperaments that unruly foreigners could have after double digit flights.

“ _Finally_ ,” Yuri grumbled. He slung his bag over his shoulder once again, departing with a curt “see you later, loser” towards Victor before disappearing down the hall.

“Bye, Yuri!” Victor called after him—almost fondly—only to wince when he heard a clatter of noise behind him.

He whipped around to locate the source, finding a poor Japanese boy had dropped an excessive amount of plates and laundry, struggling to collect it all with shaky fingers.

“Oh, did I startle you?” Victor sunk to one knee before him, gathering some of the towels. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled. I’ll help—“

“No, no, no, please—“ The boy pushed Victor’s hands away, appearing alarmed at the mere idea. “My fault—it’s my fault, so—“

“Nonsense. Let me—“

“Ah—“ The boy suddenly jumped back, fear evident in his eyes. “A-a dog…” He pressed a hand to his head, biting into his lip with the motion.

Oh, so this must have been another one of the innkeeper’s children, Victor thought, and while the logic remained sound, he couldn’t help but feel something was off about the whole of it. “Yes, that’s Makkachin. I heard you’re allergic, but don’t worry, he’s—“

The boy scrambled up, pressing anxious fingerprints into the lens of his glasses. “I-I-I have to go. I have to—“

“But you dropped—“

“I have to go! I’m sorry!”

And with that, he was gone—like a dream—except instead of departing with a wayward glass slipper, Victor’s prince left plates stained with soy sauce and towels smelling of sulfur in his wake.

It was oddly fitting, considering what little Victor knew of him.

Victor glared over at Makkachin. “You’ve been awfully troublesome today, haven’t you, boy?”

The dog merely lolled his tongue out in response, mind equally devoid of abstract thought or bad intentions.

Victor sighed, defeated, and buried his face in Makka’s fur. “But you’re still a good boy,” he murmured, not caring in how his voice picked that exact moment to crack, reaching up to rub misplaced assurances into his dog’s back. “Still a good boy…”

 

* * *

 

“I’ve had it with you,” Yuri groused, dropping ungracefully onto a cushion across from Victor in the lounge room. No coordination. All limbs. Judges would have scored that very poorly indeed, Victor observed for no reason in particular.

“And good morning to you too,” Victor chimed back, playfully snapping his chopsticks together at him. “Sleep well?”

“Fuck off,” Yuri answered as the other expected of him, roughly yanking dishes closer to his side of the kotatsu. “It’s been _days_ ,” he finally elaborated when he had been at least somewhat satiated with food. “Aren’t you going to go practice at the rink?”

“Why should I?”

Yuri leveled Victor with a look like the other had casually suggested he might stop breathing.

“You can’t seriously mean that.”

Victor folded his fingers together, chopsticks remaining poised, and rested his chin atop them. “And if I do?”

Uncharacteristically tactful, the boy remained silent. Victor returned to eating, paying a modicum of attention to the soccer game playing in the background. He couldn’t understand a word of what was being said about it, but the score indicated a probable defeat in their near future.

“Then…” Victor looked up from his food, patient. “Are you really on vacation?”

Victor blinked slowly. Yuri just stared at him, not budging an inch. This wasn’t a matter of whether Victor was on vacation or not; it was a more introspective dive into the nature of vacations themselves. Because vacations implied an _end_ —a return back to work—and Yuri was far too disillusioned to accept that label anymore. So Victor could very well pretend Yuri wasn’t yet privy—could treat him like the kid he should have still been and deny the unspoken understanding—or he could give in and admit what they both knew to be true.

In the end, as he always did, Victor chose the coward’s way out.

“I’m going for a walk.” Victor pushed himself up from his forgotten meal, his motions fluid even in retreat. “I hear there’s a beautiful waterfall on a hiking trail not far from here.”

Yuri dropped his gaze down to the table. “Without Makkachin?”

Ah. More code. “He’s sleeping right now. I don’t want to disturb him.”

“Hn.” His chopsticks clicked as they made contact with the bottom of a bowl. “Do as you please.”

And he would.

* * *

 

Victor wished right about now that he had picked a better excuse than “walking” to avoid difficult questions.

To keep his story straight, he did go where he indicated he would: a hiking trail that led up to a waterfall. It was carved alongside a Shinto shrine—a “jinja,” Victor had picked up—and was actually part of the shrine itself if what he could parse from his spotty Japanese comprehension was to be believed.

Still, it did surprise him how open and quiet the supposed tourist attraction was, recalling the locals’ emphatic praise regarding it. He was the only one out there as far as he could see, and despite the number of layers of self-deprecation he was currently under, that did manage to strike him as a bit suspicious. Best not to overanalyze, he thought, trying to take in the peace.

He heard the waterfall before he saw it, the rushing of water against stone harsh and unrelenting. Then, when he turned the final bend, he found the source—

Only to stop dead in his tracks.

The waterfall hardly impressed him—the locals had exaggerated; Victor had seen better—but it was the person standing below it, just outside the assault of the vicious spray, that Victor took interest in.

A man slighter in him in size and age. Japanese, Victor could only assume. His kimono corroborated as much, though it was stranger than most he’d seen so far: stark white and borderline see-through from the water’s effect on it. He faced away from Victor, eyes closed, still and poised as shachihoko, waiting for something.

(Or someone?)

As though sensing his presence—as though _expecting_ him—the vision turned to engage him. The way his kimono spread over the water’s surface gave the impression that he was floating as the fae did, not bound to the earth by anything other than his own whimsy. 

His ethereal glow did not exactly debunk the theory either.

He surveyed Victor passively, boredom evident, until his expression suddenly transformed with some form of recognition.

He took a single step back in preparation to flee.

“Hey, wait!”

The vision froze, statuesque once again despite the water still partially beating down on him. But he was real—so, so real—with how his big eyes widened and his pink lips parted.

It made Victor’s heart stutter in his chest.

“What’s your name?” Victor inquired none-too-quietly over the continual falling of water. When he only got carefully calculated blinks in return, he tried, “English? Eng-lish? Do you speak English?”

The vision visibly faltered. “A… a little.”

“Oh, good.” Victor waded into the knee-deep water to get that much closer to him, momentarily shocked by the temperature. “I’m sorry for startling you.”

The vision studied him, lingering on certain aspects Victor found flattering. “Didn’t startle… Just didn’t know you were there.”

Victor chuckled. “That’s what startling means.”

The younger man shook his head. “No—just didn’t know _you_ were there.”

The emphasis did nothing to clarify things. “What do you—?”

“Did you like the show?”

“’Show’? Oh, you mean—no, I wasn’t—you misunderstand—!”

“Yuuri misunderstands?”

Victor tilted his head. “If Yuuri is you, then yes. It was an accident.”

“Accident…”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“It wasn’t…?” The vision shook his head, almost violent in the action. “Nande mo nai.”

“Okay…?” Formalities finally seemed to catch up with Victor, compelling him to extend his hand in belated greeting. “You’re Yuuri, right? I’m Victor.”

Yuuri stared down at his hand disdainfully as though displeased with the meager offering. He looked between it and Victor intermittently until something seemed to dawn on him. He grasped the presented hand, but rather than shaking it, brought it up to his mouth to press a kiss into the inside of Victor’s wrist.

“Why are you—?” Victor hardly thought this could be a Japanese custom he was only just hearing about.

Yuuri glanced up at him through the fan of his eyelashes, his lips practically burning a hole into Victor’s skin. His tongue suddenly assisted in the worship, gentle, but at the same time, insistent and coarse like that of a cat’s. It only served to set Victor’s senses more on fire.

“I don’t—why—?”

As suddenly as it started, it stopped, Yuuri leaving Victor’s wrist just as it was, if not a bit wetter.

Clear, undistilled silence.

“Yuuri…?”

“I’m going now,” Yuuri announced, turning his back to the other. “Enjoy your walk.”

“Wait—!”

All too humanly, his legs displaced the water as he struggled up the bank. He took down the opposite end of the trail, his footsteps receding far too quickly, fading into the dull hum of the nature around them.

The chill of the water seeping into Victor’s bones seemed inconsequential to the burning heat still present on his wrist. Even then, he kept his arm out as though placing it back at his side would render the interaction void—as though the kiss would slip down his hand and into the drink if he dared to move it.

But then, slowly, he brought his hand to his back pocket and patted.

“That son of a bitch...”

Love was nothing but a fairytale, after all.

 

* * *

 

“Oh, you had a run-in with a kitsune.”

Victor choked unceremoniously on the sake that was halfway down his throat. “A-a what?”

“A kitsune.” The elderly man gestured to the bartender. “Happened to Ryuunosuke just last week. Right, Ryuu-kun?”

“Ah—“ The bartender’s cheeks colored, hand halting where it had previously been polishing. “Yes… There’s a family of them who live around here—at least one, though there are conflicting reports. I wouldn’t worry too much. Kitsune are only in it for the thrill of the deception, so your wallet will probably show up sooner or later—albeit, a little lighter.”

“Well, that’s… a relief.” It was, truly. A photocopy of his passport was in there, and he’d be lying if he said that didn’t make him a little nervous. “Then… what is a kitsune?”

“Fox youkai,” the old man grunted into the bottom of a pint.

“’Youkai’…?”

“Spirit, I guess,” the bartender clarified with a shrug. “You know… mythical creature.”

Victor swirled his cup. “Yes, but… what do they do exactly?”

There was some Japanese muttering between the men.

“Shapeshift…?” was what they finally decided upon. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Yes, that makes sense.”

“Good. Yes, they shapeshift. They’re foxes, but they have the ability to turn into beautiful humans.”

“And they use it to get money from people?”

“To trick them in any way, really. They’re not dangerous if that’s what you mean. Mostly just a nuisance. Slightly less so than tanuki though.”

“Tanu—?”

“Raccoon dogs.”

Victor considered this a moment before downing the rest of his shot. “I’ll take your word for it.”

 

* * *

 

The scritch-scratch of nails against hardwood floor woke Victor from a dead sleep. His mind tried to helpfully remind him that it was probably just Makkachin, but the dog cuddled up to his side testified to the contrary.

Victor turned on his bedside light just in time to see a fox hovering over his open suitcase, Victor’s wallet clutched between his teeth, looking very much like a child with their hand halfway in the cookie jar. The poor thing’s little chest puffed up and down sporadically, a barely audible whine escaping him.

“I’m not mad,” Victor said. It was a lie; he was at least a little irritated if he was being honest with himself but not nearly enough so to seek any kind of petty revenge. “O… Okotte nai,” he added as an afterthought and definitely not because he had practiced just in case this very scenario presented itself.

Yuuri—and it was Yuuri, wasn’t it?—didn’t give any indication that he registered the assurance. One leg was still lifted in the air—folded delicately at his side—as the other balanced precariously against the zipper of his bag, tail poised, eyes alert, wallet just starting to slip from the clutch of his jaws.

Then Makkachin lifted his head, his big vacant eyes boring into the fox’s far too sentient ones.

There was the tiniest boof—the barest hint of a bark—and Yuuri’s ears laid flat against his head, the wallet falling from his mouth onto Victor’s still thus unpacked clothes. He bolted out onto the veranda via the barely left ajar shouji screen, tail flickering just once before disappearing out of sight.

Victor sighed. “Well, at least I know how he got in.” He pushed himself up from the futon to retrieve his wallet, finding it just as the bartender implied it would be: untouched aside from all the bills and coinage having been neatly extracted. There were some teeth marks on the outside, sure, but Victor found strange comfort in it. It meant that it was _real_ —that Yuuri _actually existed_.

“Did you have to scare him off like that, Makka?” Victor asked, a wry, bitter smile pulling at his lips. “I was hoping to give him more of a piece of my mind.”

Makkachin woofed softly.

“You’re right. I wouldn’t have done that.” He crawled back under the covers, drawing his dog close and whispering like it was a secret, “Think he’ll come back?” 

Makkachin just settled deeper, sinking into the mattress with the dog equivalent to a sigh.

“Yeah… I don’t think so either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Debatably) Fun Fact: Kitsune are notoriously scared of dogs. 
> 
> Mini-Translation Guide:
> 
> "Okyakusan da yo."="We have patrons," essentially.  
> "Nande mo nai."="Never mind" equivalent. 
> 
> The rest should be self-evident (and if they're not, leave your questions in the comments!)
> 
> Let me know what you think...?


	2. Black Is the Color of Smoldering Gold, so Won't You Take Mine?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a head’s up, I added some choice tags to this fic. I wanted to keep the plot as ambiguous as possible, but… some warnings were appropriate, I think. So mind the tags.
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy!

 

Victor left food out on the veranda for Yuuri.

He felt dumb doing it, of course, trying to lure a beautiful mythical creature—one who could turn into a human, besides—the same way someone would try to entice a stray cat back home to their owner. But he was, rather unfortunately, quite out of ideas after tracking down Yuuri through other means turned up unsuccessful time and time again. The owners of the inn were no help, merely smiling at Victor in that same manner others did when they couldn’t understand what he was saying despite him speaking plain English—and a little broken Japanese, once, when he was desperate. The innkeepers’ daughter—Mari, he’d learned—only sneered at Makkachin and muttered things he wasn't sure were intelligible in any language.

And the other—the son, that boy from the first day—seemed to be avoiding him altogether.

Victor could only sigh as he set a platter over his latest offering. Katsudon, it was called, and it had better work, he thought, because Victor had tried this particular dish, and it would be a shame for something so wonderful to go to waste.

It was fine. It was _fine._ It wasn’t like Victor was doing much more than idling his time away here in Japan anyway.

He sat cross-legged under the awning, situating his laptop before him, careful to keep the food a respectful but enticing distance. He could be patient. Yakov had often remarked so between dual-edged compliments and outright slander. Patient, Victor could do. He had nothing but time.

Head propped against the back of the shouji screen, he stared into the blue nothingness of the day and hoped to god kitsune admired tenacity.

* * *

Victor looked up kitsune.

Victor should not have looked up kitsune.

Most of the stories were harmless enough—man meets fox, fox tricks man, so on and so forth until the end of time—but others bordered on the disturbing.

Because the common theme was that the fox was a seductress at heart, using whatever powers they had at their disposal to trap their prey.

Victor did not want to be prey.

And then there was the stuff about human possession…

Victor slammed his laptop shut, rubbing his eyes with the insides of his wrists. He’d been at this too long. It’d only been a couple hours, but the kitsune had officially broken him—without showing up, even. If Yuuri’s primary tactic was to have him go mad through remote mental persuasion, then he was a master at his craft.

It was dark now, Victor’s offering having come from what he could smuggle out of the dining hall at dinner. The fireflies had come out, unbothered by the sticky summer air. Victor, on the other hand, was quite sick of it by this point, desperately craving a shower after having suffered through it for the last several hours.

Just as he adjusted—static running through his leg as punishment for it having been in the wrong position for so long—a ball of fur dropped down on the railing.

He really was black as night, Victor thought, stunned, foot oddly positioned on the ball and hardly breathing as he took all of Yuuri in. His sleep-addled brain hadn’t been able to take a proper look at the kitsune the first time, but yes, he hadn’t been mistaken; he was indeed a black fox. Victor had never seen a black fox, shimmering midnight with every minute breath, dark and decadent down to caramel-rich glimmer of his eyes.

Even having known him as little as he did, Victor could tell Yuuri was more confident than he’d been during their first—or rather, second—encounter, staring Victor down as though he’d expected him there exactly as he was: sitting awkwardly, nerves alight, biting into his tongue with all the questions he wanted answers to.

After a beat to assess the situation, Yuuri dropped again onto the teaked floor, hardly making a noise with the daintiness of his paws, almost hovering but not quite. He stalked over to the dish to gently push the cover off the food—and if Victor was looking for any indication that he’d only dreamt up a magical fox, all notion of that was certainly wiped from his mind then—and inspect it with a fine, twitching black nose.

And then he gave Victor the most unimpressed look a fox could muster.

“I wasn’t going to waste it,” Victor found himself defending, shocked to find his voice was still intact. “I… I don’t know. I thought you might like it…?” God, it sounded even more ridiculous out loud than it did in Victor’s head.

Yuuri seated himself beside the meal like—well, like a dog. He wasn’t panting or barking or anything like that, but it still left Victor somewhere in uncanny valley with how he knew that what sat before him was, in fact, a man.

(Maybe…?)

“Can you…?” Victor swallowed. “Can you speak like that…?”

Yuuri nodded, only adding to the chills running down Victor’s back.

“Oh… I see.” He settled a bit more, somewhat assured now that Yuuri wouldn’t up and disappear on him, exceedingly grateful that he’d had the wherewithal to let Makkachin take a nap in the lounge. “But… you won’t. You don’t want to talk to me." 

Yuuri didn’t nod nor shake his head—and Victor was pretty sure the subtle waging of his tail back and forth was purely coincidental—which he took to mean that the matter was complicated.

“Then…” Victor brushed his laptop a touch farther away, sudden guilt washing over him over having done some investigation outside of Yuuri. “Will you answer my questions? With a yes or no?”

Yuuri seemed to consider, looking out past the veranda at the courtyard below, at the katsudon, and then finally at Victor with a mild nod.

Victor found himself parroting the motion. “Right… Then… About that time at the waterfall…” Yuuri swept his tail before him, settling down into it as though using it as a prop. Victor almost laughed before he caught himself. “At the waterfall… Was that all a trick? Did you just want my money?”

Yuuri went to shake his head, then nod, then abruptly stood and hopped back onto the balcony railing and subsequently the roof, disappearing out of sight.

“Wait! Ah, fuck—” Victor hoisted himself up, more than a little unsteady after having been sedentary for so long. He tried to peer over the roof to see where Yuuri had gone to, briefly toying with the idea of using the railing as Yuuri did to go after him but dismissing it as the headline “Famous World Champion Figure Skater Victor Nikiforov Stupidly Falls off Roof in Nowhere, Japan After Chasing Fantasy Creature” flashed through his head.

So he fell back into his earlier position, counting the seconds.

And after a few, Yuuri did indeed return.

“What’s this?” Victor asked, turning over what Yuuri had set down beside him. Whatever it was, it was covered in durable brown paper and wrapped neatly with a red string. He looked to Yuuri for permission. “Should I…?”

Yuuri’s leg extended briefly—inward instead of outwards, which was all that he was capable of. Victor had seen Japanese people use that gesture before—though obviously, in the reverse. “Douzo,” they’d say, and that meant you were allowed to take or do as you pleased.

So Victor would.

He untied the string, finding the yen he’d been stripped of neatly folded in there, coins and all. But then, underneath it all—

He held the foreign object to the exceedingly minimal light, squinting all the while. “A charm?” It flashed briefly as it dangled before him, and once he finally got a good look at it, he found it to be a cartoon, chibi-fied version of himself.

Victor couldn’t stop a slightly hysterical giggle from bubbling to the surface. “Oh, you’re a fan, huh?" 

No blush could make it through that thick coat of Yuuri’s, but Victor had to imagine he would have one if he could, Yuuri’s face turned tellingly to the side, a paw gently stroking at the floor in a telltale sign of bashfulness.

Victor placed both the money and the charm in his lap. “I see. This is what you’re telling me: that you didn’t want my money—that you just wanted to trick me and that you’re sorry because you’re my fan.”

Yuuri fell into the equivalent of a dogeza, his head hanging low.

Victor felt like laughing again. Here he was, getting an apology from what he could only assume was an all-powerful creature—and all because said creature really liked his figure skating.

In the end, it was always skating. It was always, _always_ skating.

“It’s okay,” Victor said, finding his tone to have gone softer. “I forgive you. You gave me back my wallet—and my money, too, even if wasn’t right away. So no harm done, all right?”

Yuuri peeked up, nose still low to the ground like he wasn’t entirely convinced.

Victor hummed. “Will you keep answering my questions? If I ask? I’d like that very much.”

Fireflies glowing in the abyss of Yuuri’s eyes, he nodded, scooching just a hair closer, still sprawled out on his stomach like a sphinx.

Victor mirrored the pose, albeit like a man. “I wish I could say, ‘tell me about yourself,’ but you won’t, will you? You probably don’t trust me enough yet.”

Yuuri’s tail merely drifted languidly behind him, patient, poised.

“Right.” Victor leaned on his hand. “So you like figure skating?”

A nod.

“That’s wonderful. Have you ever been to a competition before?”

Another nod, though not as quickly given and—Victor thought—more shyly.

Victor beamed. “Seen me in competition?”

Yet another nod—the most ashamed yet. 

“Aww, Yuuri~! There’s no need to be embarrassed! I think it’s—“ Victor reached out to pat him on the head, freezing as the other jumped back in clear objection.

“Oh…” Slowly, Victor drew back his hand. “Sorry… I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.”

Yuuri, claws still gripping into the floorboards, slowly, deliberately relaxed his body, each individual notch in his spine carefully falling into alignment.

He did not sit again, but he didn’t leave either, and Victor considered that a win.

“If I…?” Victor swallowed again, finding his next question to somewhat of a gamble. “If I asked about kitsune things… would you answer?”

Yuuri found interest in the garden once more, looking contemplative. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he turned back to Victor and graced him with a tilt of the head. It was so akin to Makkachin that Victor couldn’t hope to contain his laughter this time.

“Should I extrapolate that means you intend to play it by ear?”

As if on cue, Yuuri’s ears twitched, swiveling around like satellites. Victor guessed that was about as good of an answer as he was going to get. 

“Okay.” Victor fiddled with the bills he’d been gifted (or regifted, to be more precise.) “You, uh… You don’t plan on like… eating me, right?”

If foxes could look disgusted, then Yuuri certainly did, scrunching his nose up in obvious distaste.

“No? Guess I’m safe then.”

Yuuri deigned him with a look that roughly translated to “you’re a dumbass.”

“Hey, don’t give me that. I’m new to all of this, all right?”

Yuuri huffed, breath soft.

“Right, well…” Victor messed with the short hairs on the back of his head, losing eye contact. “I want to ask what you want from me… Then again, you could ask me the same thing, and if you did, I wouldn’t know what to tell you. I just…” His shoulders slumped. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here—in Japan. I’m supposed to be training, you know, but lately…” The sigh felt yanked out of him. “Sorry. I’m supposed to be asking you questions, not pouring my heart out to you.”

Yuuri was still. Calm, meditative. Then finally, he slinked forward, stopping short before Victor to grace him with a meaningful look.

There was a heartbeat—a blink—and then he slid into Victor’s lap, curling up there like an affectionate cat.

“Oh…” Victor’s voice had been reduced to breath. His fingers hesitated—just briefly—before he dragged them through Yuuri’s fur, the fox’s ears laid back to accommodate the action.

He felt like warm molten lava—raw power concentrated in a tiny body—and softer than any material Victor had ever had the pleasure of touching. He was a mother’s hug, a lover’s caress, and Victor was instantly addicted to the feeling.

“Thank you,” Victor said, because to leave this gift unacknowledged—not properly worshipped—felt like a serious offence. “You didn’t have to, but… I appreciate it.”

Yuuri merely took in a deep breath, seeming to melt into Victor’s skin more heavily with every passing moment. Victor wondered, if Yuuri was his fan like he said he was, whether he’d seen through Victor’s façade long ago and felt the need to comfort him as some sort of public service to the skating scene at large.

Or maybe Victor just looked really, really lonely.

“Hey,” Victor murmured, quiet as not to break whatever trance Yuuri had put him under, “do you live around here?”

Yuuri tensed beneath Victor’s fingers. “Sorry—too much? You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”

Yuuri settled once more.

There was silence then, precious and sacred. Victor continued his ministrations—would do so, he was convinced, for as long as Yuuri would allow.

But at last, Yuuri slipped out of Victor’s grasp, propping himself before the man once again.

“Are you leaving?”

The littlest nod.

“Will you come back?”

Another, smaller still.

“Promise?”

This time, Yuuri leaned forward, placing his head atop Victor’s knee, and then left the way he came, melding into the night.

Inexplicably, a smile found its way to Victor’s lips. “So then… It’s a promise.”

* * *

 

“Yuuuuuuuurrrrriiiiiii. Why am I here?”

Yuri just continued to push Victor into the rink—shoving him unkindly and ungently from the back—until the two made it through the doors. “Because, idiot, you’ve done nothing but laze around ever since we got here. You barely even left your room yesterday,” Yuri correctly observed, though it wasn’t like Victor didn’t have company.

“That’s because—" 

“Hey, Japanese guy! Get off the ice! I reserved the rink for today!”

The boy skating figures in the middle of the rink didn't even raise his gaze from where it rested on the ice, delicately switching his dominant foot to his non as he prepared to make another lap.

“Fucking amateur,” Yuri muttered, giving Victor yet another shove forward. “Go tell him to get the hell off the ice. I’m getting our skates from where you dropped them in the lobby.”

He stalked out, leaving Victor to hope he wouldn’t complain to the rink staff about it; the woman at the desk had seemed so nice—and a fan besides, if her reaction to seeing them had been anything to go by.

Well, if Yuri truly was intent on practice, then Victor really should ask that boy on the ice to come back another time. Serious training was no place for nonprofessionals.

“Hey, excuse me!” Victor called, leaning over the banister as he approached it. “Uh… Sumimasen!” 

Nothing. And it was with a careful tilt by the boy that Victor was able to confirm his suspicions; he had headphones in.

Victor waited until he finally circled back, then seizing the perfect opportunity, caught the boy’s arm just as he was picking up speed. “Excuse me, but I need to tell you—“

The boy’s eyes widened—and not just in reaction to being barred from another lap around the rink. 

“Oh, it’s you.” Victor’s grip relaxed. “From the onsen. I didn’t know you skate.”

Color rushed to his face—shame or something like it—and Victor just smiled, infinitely pleased.

He was almost pleased enough, in fact, to ignore Yuri’s screech of “what fresh hell is this?” that echoed up into the rafters.

_Almost._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could have gone on longer, but this just felt like a natural stopping point, you know? (Plus, I couldn't resist the cliffhanger.)
> 
> As always, kudos and comments give me life!


	3. I'd Like to Be More Than Your Passing Fascination

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been months; just know it was for good reason.

Victor didn’t quite know how he managed to pull it off, but in the end, he successfully convinced the innkeepers’ son to stick around while he and Yuri practiced—if only so he could spirit him away after and interrogate him a little on the apparent kitsunes haunting this town.

(He may or may not have left that part out, though, in said convincing.)

He was quiet, that boy. Victor still hadn’t gotten a name out of him, the kid squirming and whining when pinned down with the innocuous question—and blushing with the force of a thousand suns all the while.

So he was shy, Victor figured. Perhaps he was self-conscious about his English…? It seemed perfectly serviceable to Victor, but people did tend to care about that sort of thing.

He was still nervous, sitting at the rink’s edge, looking not quite at Victor but almost through him, catching himself focusing every now and then and hastening to correct his error; what error, exactly, Victor wasn’t sure, but _some_ error by the way he forced himself to tear away his gaze each time.

“So you know that guy?” Yuri gathered, coming to a halt before Victor with a resulting spray of ice.

“Mm… ‘Know’ might be… a bit of an exaggeration." 

“Then who is he?”

Victor held back one of his arms with the other, keeping up the illusion of stretching while he peered over at the boy. “Works at the onsen. The innkeepers’ son. Allergic to dogs. And that’s all I know.”

Yuri nearly squawked. “What do you mean that’s all you know?”

“Just that. That’s all I know.”

“Then why the fuck—?”

“Shh, Yura, he’s right there.”

“ _Then why the fuck,_ ” Yuri stage whispered, “did you ask him to stay for practice?”

Victor smiled obliquely. “I’ve been trying to talk to him for a while now. Remember that kitsune who stole my wallet?”

“Still think you made that story up—“  
  
“Well, he came and visited me last night.”

Yuri turned and stared unsubtly at the boy. “That guy?" 

Victor laughed. “No, silly! The kitsune.”

Yuri turned back to him with a growl. “A does not equal B." 

Victor sighed, switching which arm he held in the stretch. “Just trust me. He definitely knows something about it… Why else would he be ignoring me otherwise?”

“I don’t know,” Yuri groused, all the while giving every indication that he did, in fact, know. “Maybe because you’re annoying and entitled and full of it?”

“Haha, funny joke, Yuri.”

“I wasn’t—" 

“Practice!” Victor announced, clapping Yuri on the back with a little more force than necessary. “Isn’t that what you wanted to do? Practice?”

“Yeah, but—“

“Practice it is then!" 

Yuri had no programs to speak of for his upcoming senior debut at the moment—hoping, ostensibly, for Victor to rectify that—but Victor had two, which he fell in and out of intermittently, all the while cutting glances in the mystery boy’s direction on the landings of jumps and the turning of spins when he thought he could get away with it.

He looked different then, somehow, that one. “Enraptured” was the word that came to mind. Victor was familiar with the colloquial phrase of people having “stars in their eyes,” but he had never been able to picture it quite so clearly as when that boy gazed at him from across the ice, hands clasped, breath stolen, appearing for all intents and purposes like he’d gift Victor the very sun if he only asked for it.

“Am I just too dazzling?” Victor teased as he approached the banister, reaching then for his water bottle.

Ah, but he wished he hadn’t as the boy once again clammed up, curling into himself, a shamed hand coming to press against the top of his head. “S-sorry. I didn’t mean to… stare.”

Didn’t mean to get caught, more like. “That’s all right. Hey—“ Victor draped himself over the wall, nonchalance incarnate. “—let’s go to lunch together. I think I’ve practiced for long enough.”

He blinked at him. “Now…? It’s only ten thirty.”

“Yeah, it’s only ten thirty!” Yuri called behind him, bitchily, adopting the same tone but with a snappier finish.

Victor merely cocked his head at the teen. “Yes, and for those of us with complete short programs, that’s a full day’s work.”

“ _Fuck you_ —“

“So, how ‘bout it?” Victor leaned over the barrier, clasped the boy’s hand. “It’ll be fun! Like a little adventure! You live here, right? Show me the town!”

It was probably unfair, in hindsight, for him to take advantage of this obvious fan’s good nature—essentially bullying him into playing tour guide—but desperate times called for desperate measures. So Victor didn’t let it bother him too much when the boy laughed, most likely playing off his foreign, celebrity antics, and reluctantly agreed, nervous glances aside.

(Well, Victor would have plenty of time to parse the meanings of such things later. In the meantime, he had a kitsune to question about.)

Yet, before he could utter a single word—or perhaps, exactly when he was going to, the other cutting him off the very second he displayed any interest in conversing—Victor’s newly appointed tour guide inquired oh-so innocently as to where he wanted to go. 

And _shit_ , Victor hadn’t thought this all the way through. “Well…” he trailed off, hoping his ill-preparedness wasn’t overly apparent on his face. “There’s…” Along the horizon, the only notable landmark a tall pagoda-like structure perched atop a hillside, towering over the residential area. “That… over there.” He pointed lamely.

The boy turned to assess this. He did a double, triple take. “The ninja house? You really haven’t been to the ninja house yet?”

Despite everything, Victor felt himself being delighted by this. “A ninja house? Really? I’d like to see that!”

The boy laughed—breathily, just a touch—and Victor tried to pass off his resulting blush as a symptom of the weather. They walked along the road—its sheen rippling darkly in the humidity—and climbed the stairs that led to the zenith, at which point Victor dropped the act of simply appearing hot to genuinely feel like he might melt right there in a puddle before all of Japan.

“Are you okay?” the other asked of him, stooping low to match where Victor was with his hands on his knees.

“Yes… Just fine.” He inclined his head, bangs flopping wetly against his forehead. “You must have a lot of stamina to take a hill like this without any sweat.”

This was met with a hum as the boy considered, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I live here,” he said simply.

“Ah, right. So you’re probably used to it.”

“Used to…” His nose wrinkled. “No, I still live here.”

“No, I mean—“ Victor righted his posture, pushing his hands to the small of his back to stretch out the muscle. “You’re ‘used to it.’ Meaning you are… hmm…” He stared into the blue of the sky, thinking. “Meaning you do it a lot. Often. Because you live here.”

“Yes…?” He blinked at Victor. “That is what I said.”

And well, Victor couldn’t find any fault in that statement.

“Sure. So that’s the ninja house, huh?” Victor approached it, the boy at his heels. “Looks bigger close up.”

“Would you like me to take your picture in front of it?”

Victor lit up. “Would you?”

“Of course.” The boy smiled, wry. “Tourists ask me all the time.”

Victor didn’t exactly like the idea of being categorized as a “tourist” in the other’s mind; it felt too constricting a label for… whatever it was they were cultivating here. And _yet_ — “Just one, then.”

After, admittedly, many pictures, they went through the structure itself and emerged around lunch, at which point, Victor was ready to initiate Operation: Kitsune Questioning.

While they ate, of course, because what were they, animals?

They decided upon ramen—“I’ve never had it before!” “How long have you been here again?”—and made their way to the place the boy thought best.

And to Victor’s credit, upon receiving their food, he waited a very commendable five minutes to commence his plan of action.

(Still not long enough though, apparently.)

“So, I hear you have kitsune around here…?”

And yeah, okay, that really wasn’t fair of Victor, dropping that question on the poor boy when he had noodles halfway down his throat.

Predictably, he choked, managing to swallow after much trepidation, sipping water slowly after in a way that felt to Victor like he may have been stalling for time. “Um…” He shot a look around him, finding their conversation to be as private as it could be in a ramen shop (which was to say, not very private, given the lack of space.) “We… Yes, there have been reports.”

“Hmm?” Victor leaned on his hand above his bowl, steam warm on the underside of his chin. “Oh, yes, I’ve heard. But I thought maybe you might have known something more.”

“W-why—?” The boy went back to his noodles, in a rush to occupy his mouth. “Why would you think that?”

“Just a guess.” Victor twirled his chopsticks. “See, I had this interesting encounter yesterday. A kitsune visited my room.”

“O-oh, at the onsen?”

“M’hmm. A fox as black at night, kind and sweet, beautiful really, and—oh, are you okay?”

The boy had dropped a fair bit of noodles back into the bowl, the broth splashing and coming to mar his heated cheeks. “Y-yes!” he squeaked, scrubbing the broth away with the back of hand. “Okay! Fine! Just fine, really!”

“Okay…? So about the kitsune…”

“What about?”

Victor folded his hands. “I’d like to know more about him. Any insider information you’d have would be very useful.”

“Why would I know something like that?”

“Weeellllll…” Victor feigned mulling it over, tapping on his lower lip, then tilting his head when he thought appropriate. “Has the kitsune ever visited you? Have you ever seen him before?”

“Ah…” The boy writhed in his seat, eyes set intently on the food before him. “No… I’ve never met him before.”

That felt… genuine, somehow. Uncomfortably delivered but genuine. “So… not _that_ kitsune. Any others?”

“N-no—“ He made to adjust his glasses, missing by a centimeter and drawing a smear across the lens. “—no comment.”

_So not a no._ “I—“ Victor cleared his throat, straightened his back. “I should have said so before, but I don’t intend the kitsune any harm. I hope that’s clear.”

The boy turned to him then, expression warm and open like Victor hadn’t seen yet of him. “I know that, Victor.”

_Oh._ “Oh.” He needed a moment to recover from that. “I’m… glad.”

The other nodded. “So, uh—“ He picked up his chopsticks again, poised to ensnare a slice of pork. “Tell me about… the kitsune. When he visited your room, I mean. What was it like?”

“I already said,” Victor told him, slow, distant. He hadn’t expected this interrogation to be turned around quite so easily. “Kind, beautiful—“

The boy just laughed, the soft pealing of church bells. “No, no! I mean what did he _do_? What did he come to your room for?”

“Ah—“ Admittedly, Victor’s face took on a delicate pink as he recalled. “I… I wanted to draw him out, so… I left food for him… on the balcony. It—stop laughing at me; I _know—_ it ended up working, I guess, and he came… and left. We talked a little—well, _I_ talked, and he listened and nodded occasionally.” Much like the person who was sitting next to him was doing now, Victor silently noted.

“Anything else?”

“Mmm…” Victor considered. “Well, he did disappear for a moment to bring back something.”

“Oh? And what was that?”

_Why do I feel like he’s messing with me?_ “Money,” Victor informed absently, distracted as a slew of suspicions flooded his mind unbidden, “that he’d stolen from me. Oh—“ He smiled then, fondness drowning out the initial wave. “And a charm… of me. Figure skating merchandise, I suppose. He actually—“ Chuckles escaped him. “He actually left in on the veranda, I think. He must have forgot… It’s probably still there. I don’t remember picking it up.”

Victor thought again how this boy was very clumsy indeed as his chopsticks went scattering against the counter and onto the floor. “U-uh, really?” he remarked as he leaned forward to fetch another pair. “Forgot it in your room? How… careless of him.”

Victor shrugged. “Who knows though? Maybe he’ll come back at get it.” He inwardly smirked. “Might work well as incentive.”

“Incentive…” he mumbled, feeling out the syllables. It didn’t seem to be a word he was familiar with, and Victor watched as the boy retrieved a pen from his pocket and wrote it on the inside of his wrist—though wildly misspelled from what Victor could tell reading it sideways.

“I could just tell you what it means,” Victor offered, bemused.

The other shook his head, even as he replaced the cap of the pen from where it was clutched between his teeth. “No, thank you. I’m trying to work on my English. It would be, um…” He paused, mentally searching. “Cheating,” he decided on.

“There’s nothing wrong with teachers or coaches.”

“Mm.” He blinked slowly—deliberately, Victor couldn’t help but think—to appraise Victor from the corner of his eye. “I like to do my own research.”

Victor swallowed.

The boy abruptly stood up at this, slinging his duffle bag over his shoulder from where he had propped it against the counter. “Thank you for lunch,” he said with a bow, “but I have to return to the onsen.”

“Oh, so soon?”

“Yes.” He shelled out a few hundred yen from his pocket, leaving them on the counter with a nod to the chef and a concise “gochisousama.” “Um—“ He adjusted his bag, tucking it tighter to his side. “Good… Good luck on your kitsune thing. And… anything else.” He seemed to glance, then, at Victor’s own bag—at where his skates were peeking out, just a glint of gold.

Victor’s breath caught. “A-ah, yes. Thank you.”

He was gone then—far too quickly, Victor couldn’t help but think, even knowing this was the most consecutive time he’d spent with him since they’d met. 

It was only when Victor was making his way back to the onsen in a pleasant daze that he realized he’d failed, once again, to get the boy’s name.

* * *

 

Upon opening the door to his room, Victor was immediately met with the sound of a very familiar scratching coming from the veranda.

“Yuuri~!”

The fox yipped at being discovered—the sound more human than animal somehow—and promptly dropped the object in his mouth to the floor with a clatter.

“Sorry~!” Victor lilted. “Didn’t mean to startle you— _again._ I tend to do that a lot, don’t I? I just wanted to catch you before you left. Am I rambling? I feel like I’m rambling. It’s just that I had lunch with this _amazing_ guy who works at the onsen—cutest eyes, adorable accent, maybe you know him?—and… Hey, where are you going?”

Yuuri froze where he was sneaking towards the railing, body coiled tight in preparation to jump, and dropped the item yet again, this time scattering well out of his immediate reach and before Victor’s feet. 

“Oh, it’s that charm.” Victor chuckled, retrieving it from the ground and turning it over in his fingers. “That’s funny. I was _just_ talking about this. Did you—?” Victor looked to Yuuri then, finding the latter to shuffling—bouncing from one set of paws to the other—with something akin to unease. “Oh… I see. It’s yours, isn’t it? You probably want it back.” He crouched down to Yuuri’s level, offering the charm forward in the crux of his palm. “Here, take it. Unless you want me to sign it first…?”

Yuuri squeaked at that, hurried but careful teeth extricating the object, and promptly hopped onto the roof to squirrel it away somewhere.

“Ah—don’t let me scare you off!” Victor called after him, a bit desperate sounding. “I promise I won’t ramble anymore! So come back please!”

It was hardly a minute later when Yuuri returned, charmless—or rather, without the charm—to place himself before Victor again, twitches of tension still rife within his form but otherwise, for the moment, looking quite relieved.

“Nice to see you again,” Victor greeted, rolling the shouji screen open invitingly. “Care to come in? I could get you a drink, maybe?”

Yuuri considered this, looking past Victor—past everything, really—as he weighed his options.

Victor huffed a soft laugh under his breath. “You do drink tea, don’t you? I’ve seen you look human before; I imagine it’s not _im_ possible.”

Yuuri seemed to take this as a challenge, sauntering into the room like he owned the place—only to promptly scamper away, legs toppling into each other one after the other, into the corner as what he’d done sunk in.

“Don’t be nervous, Yuuri,” Victor cooed, reaching out to him. It was probably pointless—offering his hand as though Yuuri was merely a skittish puppy not yet acclimated to his environment—but old habits died hard, he supposed, and then and there, Yuuri certainly did resemble a younger, sprier Makkachin, shaking in the corner of his flat, whine pitched to receive the maximum amount of cuddles.

And who was Victor to deny that?

“Here, just… Wait here.” Victor stalked over to his room’s only table where a traditional tea set and hot plate were arranged invitingly. Quaint, Victor had thought, but he hadn’t considered using it. 

Well, more like he hadn’t considered he’d have a guest to offer tea to.

Victor flinched minutely as he spied Yuuri from the corner of his eye—having lost track of him in the interlude of setting out cups, slitting open teabags—to which Yuuri reacted in kind, hopping back, then slinking forward once more when Victor smiled apologetically. “We—this inn only has one kind,” Victor told him, conversational. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Yuuri finally made his way over to the table—short, only a few centimeters taller than Yuuri as he was, on four legs—and put his front paws on the lacquered wood, trying to sit, it seemed, as a human would with a non-human body.

Victor couldn’t help but laugh at the imitation. “You don’t have to do that, Yuuri. I’ll put the cup on the floor. Or…” He considered, tapping his lips. “Or you could sit on the table…? Yes, that might be better.”

Yuuri took the initiative, bounding up but carefully navigating the arrangement Victor had set up, folding his legs demurely under him and making a home among the dishware.

There was silence.

When the teapot began to whistle, Victor made to reach for it, but to his surprise, Yuuri took the handle in his mouth and tipped it to the side, pouring appropriate amounts of water into each cup.

“Wow, amazing!” Victor praised, clasping his hands. “You’ve done this before?”

Yuuri returned the pot to its place, looking displeased with himself, somehow. But nothing could be done about it, ostensibly, so he settled once more.

“So—“ Victor took a sip, tried not to grimace. He’d come to find out that traditional green tea was a little bland for his taste. “—you do that often? Serve tea? You handled it quite well for someone without opposable thumbs.”

Yuuri’s head dropped—and for the slightest of seconds, Victor had gone stock-still, fearing he’d horribly offended him—but his head turned, furry little mouth open, noiselessly shaking with what Victor had to extrapolate was laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Victor asked wryly, amused even as the joke flew over his head. “Did I say something strange?”

Yuuri shook his head, still quaking every now and then, even as he tried to compose himself.

“Hmm.” Victor propped his elbow atop the table, leaned on his hand. “That does make me wonder though, what it is you do all day. I mean, besides seducing unsuspecting foreigners, of course.”

Yuuri immediately sobered, black eyes grave upon his own reflection looking back at him in the tea water. Obviously, he couldn’t answer that—not without words anyway—and Victor didn’t expect him to. 

“Another question then,” Victor wagered. He waited until Yuuri’s eyes were lifted from the drink and back onto him. “What do you think of my dog, Makkachin? Are you afraid of him? Do you hate him?”

At this, Yuuri vehemently shook his head, looking fearful, almost, that Victor had ever even considered such.

“Then…” Victor sighed, pulling a frustrated hand through his fringe. “I have so many ‘why’ questions,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “We’ll never make progress like this…”

Yuuri had the decency to look chagrined at this, shrinking back a touch. He scanned the room—then hopped off the table.

“Ah—“ Victor reached after him. “I’m so sorry, Yuuri. I didn’t mean to imply—wait, I can just—“

But Yuuri didn’t leave. Instead, he halted before Victor’s bed to paw at the laptop he had charging beside it. At Victor’s questioning tilt of the head, Yuuri pushed the screen up with the brunt of his nose, then in similar fashion, tapped nonsense into the password bar.

It hit Victor all at once. “Oh! You can spell!” More importantly, he could write. Victor nearly tripped over himself reaching the laptop. “Great idea, Yuuri!” He gave Yuuri’s head a pat, even as the fox huffed indignantly at the treatment.

They returned to the table, Victor clearing it, somewhat, of the clutter to give space for the computer. “Here,” he said, opening a blank document. “So then, let’s start with this: Why it is that you don’t like Makkachin?" 

Yuuri stared at the keys for a while, mapping out his answer. Then he pushed his nose to the corresponding buttons, pausing only to take polite laps of tea between the keystrokes.

_Instinct_ appeared before a blinking cursor.

“Instinct?” Victor questioned, looking for confirmation.

Yuuri nodded.

_They know_ , he added.

“Know what?”

_Us._

“Huh?”

_From humans._

“Ah.” The puzzle pieces were starting to fit together. “They can tell kitsune from regular humans.”

A second nod.

“And that’s… dangerous. For you.”

A third to complete the set.

“I see.” Victor considered this. “Yes… Yes, that would be rather frightening for you.”

Just as Yuuri made to spell out another answer, a rapping knock sounded throughout the room. 

Yuuri spilled among the keys, making himself small, hiding behind the screen. Victor couldn’t help but chuckle when he noticed the resulting gibberish the impact had communicated onto the document.

“Victor!” Yuri’s familiar voice carried through the door. Yuuri shrunk further, heart beating visibly faster. “Open the door!”

“What is it, Yuri?” Victor called back, the very picture of calm. He placed a hand to Yuuri’s back, the fox startling at the contact but staying still, his pulse rabbiting under Victor splayed fingers.

The shouji was yanked open, and Victor could almost feel the very second Yuuri’s blood ran cold.

“You left your stupid fucking short program music at the—“

Victor’s CD clattered to the floor.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Yuri demanded. “He’s _real_?”

“Yes, he’s—“

But before any kind of explanation could be made, Yuuri slipped through Victor’s fingers like the finest of silks, a stain of black smearing against the floor, between Yuri’s legs, skittering down the hall, gone like ink washed out of a garment.

Yuri stared at where Yuuri had been previously, contemplating. _Processing_. “What… was that?”

Victor groaned, holding his forehead in resignation. “You know perfectly well. The _kitsune._ He came to visit me again.”

Yuri’s head whipped to the side, looking, no doubt, at where Yuuri had disappeared to. “You… Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Yuri narrowed his eyes, accusatory. “I thought you said he was a guy—like a _person_.”

“He was… at first. The first time I met him. But he’s only been appearing to me as a fox lately.”

Yuri threw up his hands. “Un-fucking-believable. You’re either losing your mind or have actually courted a mythical creature, and I don’t know which one is worse.”

Honestly, at this point, Victor didn’t know either.

* * *

 

It was right around the time Victor had just about dropped off to the sleep that he jolted—with sudden clarity—as though he was waking up from one of those dreams where you fall endlessly before your whole body shudders awake at the moment of impact.

_Yuuri could still be here._

But no, that was silly. Yes, he’d scampered off towards the lounge instead of escaping outside this time, but surely someone had let him out…? The innkeepers seemed in on the whole thing, if Victor was being honest with himself.

Oh. And the shapeshifting.

Right, there was that.

Yet, sleep eluded him, Victor tossing and turning until Makkachin well and truly gave up on him, trading in his fidgety owner for a peaceful corner to inhabit.

Victor threw off the sheets.

The onsen was closed at this hour. Victor knew this, but he wandered towards it regardless, tying a jinbei tight even as he approached the “no entry” sign.

It was just his luck, then, that he spied a shadow curling around the sign, tail dark against the backdrop before slipping around it.

_Yuuri._

He bypassed the sign easily enough, tiptoeing around it with every bit of ballet training he’d ever had to endure at the forefront of his mind. He inched along the outer wall, tracing stonework with his hands, squinting to make out shapes in the darkness.

The courtyard, however, was moonlit, the babbling of a fountain trickling even then over the edge, ripples playing on the surface of the water.

Before it, a black fox sat on his haunches with his back to Victor, tail swishing indolently back and forth like a pendulum, listening. _Waiting._

Victor forgot how to breathe.

Yuuri sighed, his whole body expanding and compressing with the motion, and then he was changing— _morphing—_ before Victor’s eyes.

It was slow but fast all at once, trackable, but all done in the length of a blink. Yuuri’s hands— _Yuuri’s hands_ —reached up to push the hair from his face, laughing quietly—privately—when errant strands simply bounced back against his forehead. He hadn’t, evidently, seen the need to shapeshift with any form of clothing—if that’s how it worked?—bare from the neck down, though the arms of his cobalt glasses stood out starkly against his silhouetted figure.

Wait, glasses…?

A bucket of bath essentials crashed against the ground—Victor having grasped it, mistaking it for an extension of the wall—boxes banging, bottles clanging until they fell motionless, a few especially daring products continuing to roll in the otherwise quiet.

The boy— _Yuuri_ —stared back at him, wide eyes unblinking, arms crossed protectively over his chest.

“Yuuri, you’re…” _Beautiful. Wonderful. Giving my life meaning._ “… the kitsune.”

In the span of a heartbeat, Yuuri was fox once more, scaling the onsen’s fence even before he had completely reverted.

“Yuuri, stop!”

And—miracle of miracles—he did, balanced along the crest of the divider, paws before one another, still as a stone.

“I…” _Hadn’t thought I’d get this far._ He took a breath. Let it out. “I just want to talk. This whole time… I’ve just wanted to talk.” He edged closer, light on his feet, and offered a hand forward before Yuuri’s trembling form. “Just… trust me. Okay? All I want to do is talk, all right? So please come down from there.” _Please don’t leave me again._

Yuuri visibly hesitated—the smallest spasm rolling down his fur—but then gently, delicately placed a paw upon Victor’s palm, claws retracted, the pads hardly brushing but just managing to do so as the skin was raised ever so slightly with goosebumps.

“You want to talk?” Yuuri asked of him, small and quiet, and Victor somehow maintained composure in the face of seeing those words come directly from the fox’s mouth. 

“Yes. If you’ll let me.”

In the next moment, Victor was clutching Yuuri’s hand—Yuuri’s human hand—the fingers clutched tightly around his like they didn’t care to part from him again.

“Okay,” Yuuri said, perched above him, shaking minutely but eyes blazing bright—blazing right at Victor. “Let’s talk.”

Victor helped Yuuri down from the fence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Look, _someone _had to be naked in the onsen. This is a Yuri on Ice story, after all. ~~~~__~~
> 
> Okay, so we're FINALLY getting somewhere. Just a bit more plot and we'll be at the good stuff. I have like a hundred future scenes for that, so it should go quicker (or at least quicker than it's been.)
> 
> Next time: Victor Nikiforov's Crazy Idea! "Eh? What do you mean you don't want to skate? What do you mean you want _me _to?"__


	4. Be Me (Be Mine)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, but your favorite kitsune story is back~ Aah, this one was a challenge, but it's all gonna be worth it. OTL

“Does it wear off?”

A head tilt, the shadow of which elongated across the candle-lit floor. “’Wear off’…?”

“You know, the…” Victor rolled his wrist. “The human thing. Do you revert back into a fox after a certain amount of time? Or can you stay human forever?”

“I can stay,” Yuuri confirmed—only to wrinkle his nose in apparent disdain the next second. “Feels weird though.”

“What feels weird?”

Yuuri leveled him with a bored look over the knees he had tucked under his chin. “Wearing a mask." 

Well, that wasn’t _at all_ a nightmare scenario Victor had considered before. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Yuuri parroted, smiling as though he hadn’t just dropped a metaphorical bombshell on the other. “But for you, I’ll wear it. You like it, so…”

“I like you as a fox too,” Victor was quick to assure, a hand slapped to the lacquer. “I like Yuuri however he comes.”

“Mm,” Yuuri considered, stretching out soft and languid, pleased and pliant. “Do you…? Tell me more.”

The words burned upon Victor’s face like a brand. “W-well, I… was very drawn in by you the first time we met.”

“In the onsen?”

“At the waterfall.”

“Oh.” It was, evidently, the wrong thing to say, as Yuuri curled up into himself once more. “Oh, I see.”

“You were so gorgeous,” Victor was quick to say, quick to assure. “A vision in white. I’d never seen a man so beautiful.”

Yuuri seemed to consider this, pausing to turn over the explanation this way and that. “I’m happy,” he decided on, but the words rang hollow, misused. He turned his gaze from the half-moon hanging out of Victor’s window to the man himself. “I thought so too. Of you, I mean.”

It was so simple. Victor had heard his praises sung—had his poetics thoroughly waxed—and yet, this quiet admission was somehow better than all other previous honors combined.

A quiet settled upon them, pure and sacred. It was as though the faintest breath or whiff could shatter the crystalline silence; Victor was scared to move—scared to speak too loudly, gesture too sharply—for fear of divine retribution, a lightning bolt descending on him from the heavens to strike him down for any careless maneuver he might make in the presence of a deity.

And yet he spoke anyway.

“So you skate?”

Yuuri’s face took on a flushed hue, detectable even in the low light. “Not like you,” he immediately denied, vehement.

“I would think not,” Victor said, meaning it—in every way—as the compliment it was. “I’m sure yours is quite lovelier than mine.” He leaned forward, just a touch. “How long have you been skating?”

“Nearly forever,” Yuuri answered, sounding equal parts exasperated and fond. “I can—“ He swallowed, then persisted, a sudden gleam entering his eye. “I can land a quad toe loop now… and a salchow, sometimes.”

“Really? A quad?”

Yuuri flinched but didn’t back down. “Two,” he reminded quietly, holding up two fingers for visual.

“That’s amazing!”

“Mm.” Yuuri tucked back into himself. “Not _that_ amazing.”

Victor went to retort—then upped himself, offered one better: “You should show me. Right now.”

“R-right now?” Yuuri sputtered, limbs flailing uncharacteristically as Victor pushed himself up from the tatami, hooking one of Yuuri’s arms on the ascent. “But it’s the middle of the night—!”

“Yeah, and that’s what’s so fun about it! So let’s go!”

As forbidden—and therefore romantic—as a spontaneous skate seemed, reality, of course, always had a way of crushing those fanciful ideas into dust.

“Ah. It’s locked." 

Behind him, Yuuri swayed back and forth on the tips of his toes. “I thought so.”

Victor turned back to him. “Sorry, Yuuri. I have keys to the rink in St. Petersburg, so I just…” He trailed off, wincing at the thought of what Yuri would say if he was there—how he would berate him, having to bear witness to yet another one of Victor’s patented moments of forgetfulness.

But nothing of the kind flickered across dear, sweet Yuuri’s face. Instead, a perplexingly look overcame him—something equally determined yet regretful. “I’ll… I’ll take care of it, Victor. Just wait here.”

“Yuuri…?” 

He led Victor over to edge of the stairs, had him take a seat with a prompting hand to the shoulder. “Wait. Promise?”

Victor promised. 

Yuuri rounded the building—too fast; he was just a _hair_ too fast—and then he was gone. Faintly, Victor heard the sound of a click, then a metallic squeal, as though an unoiled lock was being pried open; it was followed promptly by the skittering of little feet—paws—and before Victor could even properly register Yuuri was most probably breaking and entering for him, one of the front double-doors of the rink swung open.

“Oh, Yuuko-san,” Victor recognized, rising from his post. “Sorry to disturb you. You must think it strange to see me here this late, but—“

“Victor, it’s me,” Yuuko—no, _Yuuri_ —hissed, leaning weightily on the door hinge to prop it open. “Quick, quick,” he urged, flapping a hand at him. At Victor’s dumb stare, he cried a singular but impassioned “ _Please_!” jumpstarting Victor’s legs into motion.

No sooner was Victor embraced by the frigid air of the rink than the door was slamming behind them both, clattering against its lock in such a fashion that Victor nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Sorry.” Yuuri ran his—Yuuko’s—fingers together, as though feeling out the shape of the bone and sinew. “Yuuko-chan’s much smaller than me. Not as strong. That door is heavy.”

“You—she—ah—“ Victor was having trouble finding his tongue. “What… exactly are you doing, being her…?”

Yuuri’s focus snapped back, looking up at Victor at a much steeper angle. “I went through the manager’s office. There’s a window there—a small one, at the top of the door. But there’s a security camera too. I… ah…” He bit into his lip, eyes darting, searching out a word. “I… borrowed her. Her appearance. So that I didn’t show on the camera, when I turned it off.”

It made sense, strangely. In a weird, twisted kind of way. Yuuri had a problem; Yuuri had a solution. He simply used his means.

“I… see.” It was hard, still, to acclimate to this information. “So… you can transform into anyone. Not just yourself?”

Yuuri tilted Yuuko’s head. “What do you mean? My normal appearance isn’t me either. I’m a fox.”

Ah. How soon he should forget.

“And a very cute one,” Victor said, booping Yuuri’s nose to make light of the situation. Still, he couldn’t claim it wasn’t a little odd to have Yuuko’s face scrunch up at the treatment, even as Yuuri’s tinkling laugh spilled from her—his—lips.

“That’s… good to know, actually,” Victor continued, conversational. “Might come in handy. Except for the voice. That doesn’t match.”

“Oh.” Yuuri pouted with Yuuko’s chubby cheeks, as though displeased with himself. “I’m sorry, Victoru-san—“ Victor couldn’t smother a gasp in time. “I just needed to turn off the camera, so I didn’t change my voice. Does this sound better to you?” She— _he_ —fluttered lashes at him, to accentuate that new, feminine note in his tone, dripping in the saccharine sweetness Mrs. Nishigori was known for.

“Uh—“ He swallowed just as his voice was surely poised to break. “No, I—no, ‘better’ might be a bit subjective in this case.”

Yuuri’s— _still Yuuri’s_ —face twisted in that particular way when his brain stuttered over something he didn’t quite get. “Not better? ‘Subjective’?”

“Just… change back to Yuuri please.”

Yuuko’s pout carried over to Yuuri, even as he gained height and girth. “Better now?” he posed when he was once again dipping his own lashes—though Victor thought perhaps that they looked a bit silkier than before.

“Now there’s the Yuuri I know and love,” Victor only half-teased, his hand finding the small of Yuuri’s back to prod him forward. “Come on. Let’s go see what you can do.”

The rink was, of course, empty, their footfalls raining down loud and echoey as they strode further in. With a bit more encouragement, Victor had Yuuri ushered into his skates—and then onto the rink—in no time, the boy falling into familiar patterns as soon as his feet hit the ice.

“Well then, what would you like to skate?” Victor posed, elbows propped atop barrier.

Yuuri stopped, one leg poised in a gentle curve to rest against the other. “I think… I would like to do Stammi Vicino.”

Victor’s eyes widened, his fingers twitching from where they rested upon his mouth. “Oh…? Is that right?”

“If—“ Yuuri studied the ice, an intense look about him. “If that’s not too forward.”

“Not at all.” Victor tilted his head. “I love being surprised! Skate it however you want. Will you need music?”

“We can’t use the speakers,” Yuuri sighed, shaking out his hands. “You can play it off your phone if you want, but I don’t need it.”

 _Don’t need…?_ “If that’s the case…” Victor winked. “Start whenever you’d like.”

“I will.” He removed his glasses, gliding across the way to lay them across the boards. “So please…”  His eyes darted up—just once—before settling back on the floor. “Never take your eyes off me.”

Stunned as he was, Victor’s hand still managed to find its way to Yuuri, lifting his chin—and thus his eyes—once more. “I believe that’s up to you,” he said, a hint of a smirk there. “ _Make me_ never want to look away.”

In Victor’s hold, Yuuri nodded, a terribly small, determined thing. “Okay.”

It was dark on the ice—the floodlights having been left off, for fear of discovery—and Yuuri’s shadow followed him long and slow to center ice, the moon illuminating him only just, a black speck upon the white. He circled, then found his place, tapping a toepick once against the ice before he let his hands fall free at his sides, the tension thawing, melting off him.

There was no music, but Victor swore he could almost hear the beginning notes of the aria as Yuuri lifted his hand—so lithe, so flowing—above his head, then swooped it down to propel himself into the sequence, coming to one knee, then bounding back up.

It wasn’t like Victor skated it. Not at all. Victor skated Stammi Vicino as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, a bone-deep suffering—an almost mourning—pressing down on his very soul.

Yuuri skated it with a small smile threatening to overtake him, coy in the corner of his mouth. He jumped light and airy, like he was a winged creature rather than a fox. Even when he changed quads to triples, triples to doubles, it all felt firmly under the assumption—the absolute truth—that he had those spins in him yet, lying quiet, dormant under the surface, just waiting to be unleashed.

And how did Victor know this? Why, that teasing smirk of course, breaking out properly as Yuuri skated to the boards, let his fingers flitter before Victor, inviting him forward, inviting him _close_.

Victor felt every inch of the distance as he glided back to finish the routine, striking the end pose: his arms wrapped around himself, staring up at the ceiling. He was panting heavily then, his cheeks having gone red from the exertion, the cold.

Victor thought perhaps he might have been looking much the same way.

“That was amazing, Yuuri!” he called, clapping his hands together. The sound reverberated across the ice, startling Yuuri out of his trance; he fell out of the final pose, that smile never quite fading off his lips.

Yuuri skated before him. “So you liked it?”

“It was beautiful!” He paused, considered. “Although… there was the matter of spins not being tight enough. The step sequence could have been cleaned up a bit. Obviously you had to downgrade your jumps, but even so, the flip was abysmal—whoever taught you that was doing it _all wrong_ —and the timing was a little off towards the end, but really, I think that the routine could have been competition quality if only you had—“ Victor snapped, twice. “Yuuri? Still with me?”

The boy’s eyes had glazed over, mouth twitching at the corner with barely-concealed mirth. “Sorry. It almost feels as though you’re coaching me.”

“And you find that laughable?” Victor barked—then flinched, because _god_ , when had he become Yakov? “Ah—sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t be lecturing you. But you just…” He huffed, frustrated. “You truly are a marvel. It’s insane to me that you’ve never seen the international stage.”

“M-me?” Yuuri sputtered. “Oh, no, I… You must be joking. I could never—“

“But what if you could?”

The hypothetical rang loud over the sheen of ice.

“I… couldn’t…?” It sounded more question than statement. Yuuri tapped at the tips of his fingers, counting off: “For one, I’ve never competed for real. Two, I’m probably too old to enter the skating scene now. And three…” His ring finger twitched, tellingly. “I just _couldn’t._ I could never even get close to medaling, even if I did somehow manage to qualify.”

Victor had his hand to his lips again. “But what if you didn’t need to qualify at all?” he posed, ignoring Yuuri self-defeating comments altogether. “What if you could enter right away?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. How could I—?”

“Yuuri!” Victor nearly crushed the boy’s hands in his hold. “Please compete in my place!”

Silence. Then, all the way up to the rafters—

“ _Eeeeeeeeehhhhhh_?”

* * *

Victor didn’t want to compete. Victor didn’t want to complete, and Yuuri’s whole world was _quaking._

“I’ve wanted to retire for a long time anyway,” Victor said, heedless of Yuuri’s wide eyes, quickened breath. They were back in Victor’s room, back to lounging atop the tatami, another candle lit between them even as the sun began to rise, bleeding across the skyline. “I’ve just… never found a clean way to do it—or announce it, rather. Everyone expected it this year, at age twenty-seven. But you know—“ He laughed, humorlessly. “—I’ve never liked to do what people have expected of me." 

Yuuri nodded, coiling against the kotatsu. “Yes, but… I feel… strange, about the whole thing. Being you— _pretending_ to be you—feels… wrong.”

Victor stretched his legs, a toe coming to rest beside Yuuri’s thigh. “Wrong how?”

“Well…” Yuuri dutifully ignored the new source of warmth radiating beside him. “… you’re _Victor Nikiforov._ It would be extremely difficult for me to act like you—even if my skating was anywhere near yours, which it is _not_.”

“I can coach you,” Victor offered, “in both departments. I can coach you in skating and I can coach you in acting like me. We have quite a while until grand prix qualifications start; we might as well fill the time with something, right?”

“I can’t learn how to skate as well as you by _October_.”

“You can,” Victor said, adamant; and he needed Yuuri to know that. “I meant what I said, when I told you that you are capable of competing—of _winning_. Did you think I was lying, Yuuri? Do you really think so little of my opinion?”

Yuuri’s elbow hit the tabletop in his incredulity, the teacups clattering. “N-no, of course not—!”

“Then believe me.”

“I… do.” Victor imagined if Yuuri had his ears out then, they would be very low indeed. “But… I’m no Victor Nikiforov.”

Victor sighed. “Perhaps that’s what everyone needs. I’ve been predictable for too long. But you—you’re vibrant and novel and _alive_. Besides me wanting not to compete, I want to see that you _do_.”

Yuuri blinked. “I’m… a book?”

Victor resisted the urge to groan. “No, Yuuri. New. You’re new and exciting. Did you hear anything I said after that?”

He blinked again, slower. “Tell me again?”

“I’ll tell you as many times as you like: I want to see your skating. I want to see your skating _thrive._ The whole world deserves to see it too.”

“Oh.” Yuuri was red-cheeked now, squirming in place. “Well then… I can try.”

Victor’s expression melted into a smile. “Thank you. That’s all I ask.”

They fell asleep after that, somehow. Without meaning to. They didn’t talk any more of skating—just lied themselves across the floor, talked in low whispers about nothing in particular until the day was bright and light but their eyes were dark and heavy. Victor woke up hours later to a sore back but otherwise feeling quiet content, even as he rose to a mouthful of fur, Yuuri having felt, evidently, that being a fox was the preferable vehicle for sleep—to save space, to save energy.

Well, if Victor could do it too, he certainly would have.

“Yuuri.” Still, it felt weird: shaking a fox awake. “Hey, Yuuri.”

Yuuri came to consciousness slow—then all at once, bounding back, a paw bent, thoroughly chastened. “Victor! Sorry, I didn’t mean to—“

“We didn’t try it!”

He tilted his head, ears twitching. “’Try it’…?”

“Having you be me,” Victor said, as though it was obvious. “I’d like to see it!”

Yuuri came back to his usual human form, though a bit reluctantly if Victor was reading him right. “I… It’s too soon, Victor. I’m not ready.”

“Why not?” Victor’s brow furrowed. “Does it take a while, the first time? Do you have to practice?”

“N-no, nothing like that,” Yuuri rushed to assure. “I know what you look like, so that part should be fine. But… I’ll have to act like you too, if we’re to fool people. I don’t think I can do it well yet.”

“I don’t care about that!” A sardonic grin pulled at Victor’s lips. “Well, not yet. You’ll have plenty of time to study me later. For now, I just want to see what I look like from the other side.”

Yuuri sat up. “Promise you won’t judge?”

Victor mirrored him. “Promise.”

Yuuri sighed. “Close your eyes.”

“Huh? Why—?”

Yuuri’s hands did the work for him, covering the other from his view. “It’s embarrassing!”

“I don’t understand,” Victor said, but he didn’t remove Yuuri’s hands, pouting even as he was rendered blind. “I’ve seen you turn before.”

“And you _shouldn’t_ have,” Yuuri hissed, his fingers clenching upon Victor’s skin. “We’re—we’re not supposed to show _anyone_ , and when I’m going to be turning into _you_ —“

“Okay, okay,” Victor chuckled. He placed his hands on top of Yuuri’s own. “I won’t look. I can’t, like this.”

Yuuri fell quiet, as though considering this. Victor wondered, then, how much Yuuri actually knew about humans. Did he think them more spectacular than they were? Or just spectacular enough?

But the thought was quickly wiped from his mind as he felt Yuuri’s fingers—still pressed against him—lengthen, thin out. Yuuri’s shoulders were getting wider, his stance becoming broader, the arms bent more acutely at the elbows to accommodate his new form. Victor wanted with everything he had to watch the transformation, but he didn’t dare move, senses locked on Yuuri, even as he was feeling around in the dark.

“Okay… I think I’m done,” Yuuri said—still in Yuuri’s voice, wavering with uncertainty. He hesitated in lifting his hands, Victor’s own fingers loosening, falling to his sides before the other slid his off and away.

Victor blinked, adjusting to the light.

And there he was.

Victor Nikiforov… but not, somehow. He wasn’t Victor in how he sat on his legs in a seiza, wasn’t Victor in how blushed under Victor’s gaze, the color originating from the cheeks rather than the nose. He wore what Victor wore: a jinbei, forest green and tied crookedly—haphazardly—just as Victor’s was. And yet—

“Ah—“ Yuuri reached forward, ran his fingers through Victor’s swept bangs. “I think I got it wrong here, a little.” Victor was momentarily stunned by the motion, left mesmerized by the sensation. “You’ve been here a while, and you haven’t cut your hair recently, have you? Wait a moment…” Victor watched a mirror image of himself reach up, comb his own silvery bangs, the strands growing, coming to brush over the left eye. “There. Good now?”

“Good,” Victor croaked. “Y-yes, very good. It’s kind of scary, actually.”

“Scary good?” Yuuri offered, but it wasn’t given in his usual tone, the sound slightly nuanced, as though flirting with the concept of an accent. “I could try out your voice too,” he said, and it was an approximation of Victor’s already, gaining bass and vibrato in great measure, even as his propensity for soft articulation, rounded consonants tried desperately to cling on. “How’s this?”

Victor breathed. “It’s—“

The screen door was nearly ripped off its track.

“Victor! It’s noon, and—!”

Two Victors turned to face a stunned Yuri in the doorway.

“Oh my _god_ ,” the boy huffed, white-knuckling the shouji. “It’s like every time I come in here it gets _weirder._ ”

“Shut the door!” Yuuri struggled against his new dimensions, limbs decidedly ungraceful as he scrambled across the room, rolled the screen shut himself. It slammed, rattled at the impact—at Yuuri’s new strength—and Yuri felt the effect too, as he was yanked in, flailing to keep his balance.

Yuri went to shove Yuuri away, but the latter barely moved, solid as he was then. “ _Explain_ ,” the boy bit out, point an accusing finger at the real Victor. “I know it’s you, asshole.” He jammed a thumb at Yuuri. “This one sounds like he’s choking on a frog.”

“A frog…?” Yuuri echoed, a hand to his newly acquired silver locks.

“I’ll explain,” Victor said, patting the floor. “Sit down. It’s going to take a while.”

And explain he did—to a surprisingly subdued Yuri, as though he fully expected this atrocity to occur sooner or later. Still, he remained quiet—at least until he was sure Victor was through.

“This is a stupid plan,” Yuri said, concisely. He indicated his head toward Yuuri—still as Victor, shaking minutely as he poured them all some tea—with a sneer. “You really think this guy can act like you? _Skate like you_? You’re out of your mind. He doesn’t even _look like you_ right now.”

Victor rose an eyebrow at this over the rim of his cup. “How so?”

“Forehead’s not big enough.”

“ _Hey_.”

Yuuri giggled into his palm.

“See? That’s the kind of shit I’m talking about. You'll never be able to pull this off.”

“We haven’t even begun,” Victor told him. “It’ll take time. Work. I fully expect it and will dedicate myself to it—just as I would be with any other programs in any other season.”

Yuri stared down at the table. “You really want to retire?” He sounded so small then—sounded his proper age.

“Yes.” Victor’s answer was firm, unthinking.

Yuri considered this. “This is the absolute weirdest way to go about it.” He rolled his neck. “But I shouldn’t have expected anything less. You always end up doing the most outlandish shit. That’s the Victor Nikiforov way, isn’t it?”

Victor smiled—an unpracticed one, soft and genuine. “Thank you, Yura.”

The teenager’s face went aflame at this. “Yeah, well—“ He pushed himself up from the tatami. “—I better go then.”

“Hn? Go where?” Yuuri wondered, tilting his head.

Yuri turned to look at them both. “Home. Russia. I’ve got to catch up on my training after I’ve wasted all this time if I’m to meet you guys in competition.” He glared at them, hard. “So you better pull this off—and give me a real challenge. Don’t make me work hard for nothing.”

Two Victors nodded in unison.

“I’ll be seeing you, Yuri.”

“Ganbarimasu.”

“Cool.” Yuri smirked over his shoulder. “Later, losers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Ganbarimasu." = "I'll do my best."
> 
> Plot is in full motion! Next chapter: traveling, then competitions start! Get hyped!


	5. Funny How You Can See the Stars So Clearly, but They're So Far Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's a reason this fic in particular took a long time to update. I wrote a big chunk of this and then realized Victor was _wildly _out of character, so of course I was like, "Not in my house," and had to scrap the whole thing and start over. (Plus I had the flu, started grad school, blah, blah, blah.)__
> 
> __Plus, I needed to add some more establishing scenes before the nitty-gritty of the competitions._ _
> 
> __Anyway, this chapter has a little bit of everything, so enjoy~_ _

“Go on.”

Yuuri’s voice was calm, reassuring—and it would be, truly, if Victor was doing anything else right now.

Victor whipped his head around. “But what if they don’t like me?”

“Why wouldn’t they like you?”

Such an honest question, as though Yuuri genuinely couldn’t find a reason for this to be the case.

“Because—“ Victor swallowed. “Because I’m asking for them to just… let me _take you_ , and they’re—“

“They’re just like you or me.” God, if that wasn’t the biggest blanket statement of the century— “Just go.” Yuuri pushed him a little—at the base of the spine—Victor’s feet fumbling forward, losing all sense of grace. “They’re waiting.”

“Yes… Yes.” They certainly were. Victor pulled at the lapels of his jacket, straightened out his tie.

Then, with both hands, he separated the shouji before him.

When Yuuri had told Victor they were to be meeting in a “banquet hall,” he imagined something a little more extravagant. This appeared to be more of a storage closet—one that was _empty_ recently, if the dust tracks across the floor were anything to go by. But it wasn’t empty then, a modest table having been set up in the center, admitting two people to sit on the opposite side.

The innkeepers. Yuuri’s parents.

But so much more than that.

“Sit down please?” the father said; he was wearing the same placid smile as the day Victor had met him, but this time it felt more… Well, sinister wasn’t exactly the word for it. But concealing something. Immense power, if Victor had to guess. 

He sat down immediately.

“Tea?” Yuuri’s mother offered.

Like he was going to refuse.

“So…” Victor drummed a beat on the outside of the ceramic placed before him. “I… suppose you’re familiar with who I am.”

“Oh, yes.” Yuuri’s father smiled wider. “Yuuri is a big fan, big fan. For a long time now.”

“Well, that… certainly makes things easier. Has he… explained any of this to you?”

“Bits and pieces.” Yuuri’s mother sipped from her own cup. “The parts that are hard to translate. You, ah…” Victor could almost see the pleasantries drain from her face. “You know about us. You saw Yuuri… in both ways.”

Victor took a breath. “Yes.”

“And you… won’t tell, will you?” She tilted her head—as though it was a question—but something in the way she shifted let Victor know there was only one acceptable answer.

“Of-of course not!” Victor cleared his throat, pulled at his collar. “I mean… how even would I? It’s not something people would readily believe. And what would I have to gain from it?”

The parents exchanged a look.

“If you were anybody else,” the father said, “we might be more suspicious of your intentions. But as you say, there is nothing. You already have fame and wealth. You haven’t told anybody of us yet, and—“ He cocked his head just so. “—Yuuri seems very fond of you.”

Victor resisted pulling at his collar again, a blush hot on the bridge of his nose.

“You want to make Yuuri’s dream come true.” Yuuri’s mother’s voice was soft, grateful. “As we are, we don’t get many… _chances_ , to do things in the public eye. But you are willing to help.”

“Yes.” Victor grasped at the fabric of his pantlegs. “Yuuri is… miraculous. A wonderful talent. And with your permission, I’d like to share his abilities with the world. 

“So he will be going away.”

“For a little while. I promise to return him.” Victor nearly scoffed hearing his own words; it sounded a bit as though Yuuri was a heavily coveted library book.

“He’s grown up,” Yuuri’s father handwaved away. “He can do as he pleases. But he always has a home here.”

“And it’s a lovely home,” Victor assured, ardent. “I really have enjoyed my time here—and hope to do so for a while longer, until Yuuri and I are to depart for our first competition.”

“We will be happy to have you.” Yuuri’s mother folded her hands, delicate. “We do have a… ah… stipulation of sorts.”

Victor straightened. “Of course. Anything.”

“Don’t hurt him.” She smiled, morose. “His heart is… fragile. I do not worry about his health or wellbeing, but his feelings… Do give this up now, if you don’t intend to take your role seriously.”

“I would _never_ —“

“This isn’t personal, Nikiforov-san.” The father sighed, full-bodied. “But there have been others, throughout time, who have promised our kind the world. They hardly ever deliver. And just so you know…” His eyes narrowed, though the smile stayed unnervingly in place. “If you _do_ hurt our son, we will know. And it will not end well for you.”

Victor paled. “You have my word as a skater—and as a man—that no harm will come to him under my watch.”

Yuuri’s father stared a moment longer—then reached across the table. Victor braced himself—eyes involuntarily squeezing shut—but the man merely took his shoulder, shaking him. “No need to be so stiff!” he said with a hearty chuckle. “We’ve made an agreement! Come now and drink with us. Something far better than tea. I can break out the good sake.”

“A-ah, no, but thank you.” Victor tried—fervently—to keep the fear out of his voice. “I think Yuuri and I should start practicing, if that’s all right with you.”

“No problem at all. You do what you need to.”

“Then…” Victor stood, shaking the numbness out of his legs. “It was a pleasure. I’ll be going now.”

Yuuri’s mother waved as Victor turned his back on them, pausing as he grasped the handle of the sliding screen. “Ah, forgive me if I’m overstepping my bounds,” he preluded, casting a look over his shoulder, “but I can’t help but wonder… You said Yuuri was grown up. Just how old is he anyway?”

Yuuri’s father considered, a finger to his chin. “In human years?”

Victor shook his head, a chortle deep inside his chest. “Never mind. It was a stupid question.”

* * *

“Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat this.” A cold bite clung to Victor’s breath, his words reverberating over the ice, against the barrier, up the stands. “We’re going to have to do some rather intense training to get you to my level. If you wish to back out, now would be the time to say something.”

Yuuri squared his shoulders. “No, I want to do this. I’m prepared to give it my best.” His lower lip twitched, just once. “So please…?”

Victor exhaled, dropping the tension from his shoulders. “Good, that’s what I like to hear.” He dropped a blade against the ice, the crack stark, physical. “Then we’re jumping straight into quads. Prepare yourself.”

* * *

If teaching Yuuri quads was difficult, teaching Yuuri to act like Victor was near-impossible.

“Straighten your back. You’re a skater, aren’t you? Who taught you posture?”

Yuuri stiffened—as Victor—and grasped at the front of his shirt, in a bout of unease. “I-I’m sorry. I’m not used to being so tall. I feel… big." 

“Good, you should feel big.” Victor untangled the other’s fingers from their vice, placing his hand at his side. “You’re a five-time world champion. Your presence should fill up the entire room. You should intimidate and inspire, in equal measure.”

“I don’t feel as though I could do either of those things…”

“You want to give up?”

Yuuri jolted. “N-no, of course not—“

“Then stop being so self-defeating.” Victor tisked. “We’ve barely even started. Let’s take it from the top.”

“The top of what…?”

Victor pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. We’re going back to English lessons for now.”

* * *

“Again, Yuuri.”

* * *

“Yuuri, again.”

* * *

“Yuu _ri_ —“

* * *

“ _Again_.”

* * *

Victor grappled at his water bottle, the damned thing having slipped from his grasp when he felt a sudden chill race down his spine: quick and bright and somehow strangely familiar.

He was pulling on his jacket when feather-light fingertips skated down the back of his neck.

“Good morning, Victor-kouchi.”

“ _Yuuri_ —!” Victor spun around, clamping a hand to his nape. “G-good morn—“ He choked, finally getting his first proper look at Yuuri of the day.

It was appropriate enough attire for skating, sure— _athletic_ —but in a way that implied a different kind of exercise altogether. Pinstriped leggings hugged Yuuri’s thighs like a second skin, and he sported a shirt that seemed at least a size too small for him, a strip of skin visible just below the waist. Additionally, for the first—or rather, second—time since Victor had seen him, his hair was pushed away from his face, no glasses present to distract from the inky black of his lashes nor the brightness of his eyes.

“Victor-kooouuuchiii,” Yuuri sang, tottering on the tips of his toes. “You’re acting strange today. Do you feel unwell? Shall we go back to bed?”

While Victor’s brain stuttered over that—the operative “ _we_ ”—a call came through to his cell, the ringtone blaring from his duffle between them atop the banister; Yuuri glared at it as though the device had personally slighted him.

Victor fumbled for it anyway, even as his eyes remained unsteadily ahead.

“Ah, I have to take this.” And Victor could not have been more genuinely sorry. “It’s my—your— _our_ publicist. Just… warm up, all right? I’ll be there in second.”

Victor tried not to let it get to him: the pink of Yuuri’s bottom lip, jutted out in demonstrated displeasure as he turned away.

It was just another day.

_It was just another day._

(But like hell was _Victor_ the one acting strangely.)

It—the strangeness, _Yuuri_ —didn’t abate. He continued the charade—whatever it was—each day, showing up to the rink, the studio, the common room in all manner of dress, like he was taking his wardrobe directly from the closet of Victor’s wildest fantasies.

And his _voice_.

And what he _said with it._

“I think we should get to know each other better.” Yuuri leaned across the kotatsu, caressing the line of Victor’s jaw, the underside of his chin, his throat. “Build some trust in our relationship…”

Well, Yuuri was certainly getting better at English if nothing else, Victor mind unhelpfully supplied, a bead of sweat sliding down his temple, into the dip of his collarbone. “Sure…?” It sounded as though it was a question. “What did you have in mind?" 

“Mm.” Yuuri grinned, so brilliant it was hard to look at. “I think—“

“Yuuri! Okyakusan da yo!”

Yuuri’s nails clenched at Victor’s skin, hard, blunt— _vixen_ —before releasing, a canine drawing a speck of blood upon Yuuri’s lip. “Hai, Okaa-san!” he answered, rising from his seat, expression returning to a careful neutral.

Victor waited until his footsteps faded to prod at his neck, feeling nothing more than a nervous lump in the throat.

He rightfully remained on edge for the rest of the afternoon.

* * *

There were notes and figures before Victor when it happened next, the cap of a pen tapping idly against his spring-warmed cheek as he went over the final revisions to his—Yuuri’s—free skate. Occasionally an errant drop of water slid off his bangs and ran the ink, but he was merely too focused to rectify it. After all, he’d practically sprinted out of the onsen when he’d thought of it: the crowning glory of the program, a maneuver only Yuuri could do justice. So he had to get it down on paper _now_ , before the inspiration left him.

Still, it did niggle him in the back of his mind that he had been _alone_ in the onsen, for the first time in a long time.

He was just dismissing the thought when a knock sounded from the other side of the shouji screen, soft but sure.

“Come in,” Victor said, even as gathered the pages before him to give them one last look-over.

The door slid open.

“Vi-ku-to-ru…”

The pen fell from Victor’s numbed fingers, rolling across the table, onto the floor.

It was Yuuri—but no. It was Yuuri but _not Yuuri._ Yuuri had been spirited away, and in his place, a woman stood: with Yuuri’s same pouty lips and Yuuri’s same soft curves and Yuuri’s same elegant fingers—held to his waist, his hip—and Yuuri’s same feathered locks, pressed against the frame of the door, coquettish.

He wore what Victor wore and in exactly the same way: a jinbei, opened at the chest, with fresh sulfur clinging to the skin.

“I finally figured it out,” he was saying, over the white noise in Victor’s head. He dropped to his knees, crawling towards where Victor was sitting, placing a searing hand above the heart. “I was wondering the whole time what I was doing wrong, you know.” There was a new note to Yuuri’s voice, Victor realized. It was higher. _Feminine._ “I got it though, eventually. You’d prefer me this way, wouldn’t you?”

“Yuu—?”

“Ah, almost forgot.” Yuuri reached behind himself, fanning out his hair; ribbons of newly-acquired length cascaded down his shoulders, rich obsidian rippling like the tides. “So? What do you think?” His eyelashes kissed his ripened cheeks, just once. “Does it look good on me? Is this what you wanted?”

It was a full-time job, Victor was finding: not choking on his own tongue. “It’s… You look… fine.”

“Hmm? Just fine?”

“Good!” Victor rushed to correct. “Better than good! You look beautiful, but—“

“I’m so glad you think so.” Yuuri tilted forward, just a touch; his breath was hot on Victor’s mouth with promise. “Now that I know what Victor wants, I can satisfy him.”

And god, if _that_ wasn’t a bucket of ice water over Victor’s head.

“No—“ Victor made to push him away, but it was a stronger shove than intended. Yuuri fell back, curling against the hardwood, a balled fist pressed to his lips. “Oh, I—Yuuri, I’m so sorry, but—“ Victor sighed, an anguished hand coming to run through his fringe. “You misunderstand. This isn’t… This is _fine_ , if it’s what _you_ want. But I want _Yuuri._ Just Yuuri.”

Yuuri’s eyes followed nothing in particular, as though he simply couldn’t process this. “You don’t like… this Yuuri?”

“No, I—I’m trying to tell you: I like _you_. However you come.”

“Oh.” His voice had reverted, even if the rest of his body had yet to catch on. “I… see.” He looked at Victor then, full-forced. “You like… Yuuri. _Yuuri_ Yuuri.”

“Yes! I’m so glad you understand!”

Yet Yuuri only wound himself tighter. “But ah—kitsune… Kitsune can be many things. Whatever they want. Man… woman… other. We go back and forth. And humans—“ He swallowed, oh-so small. “Humans don’t usually like that.”

Victor came before him, offering a hand, palm up. “I’m sorry if you’ve had some bad experiences with humans. But I promise you this: I will always like Yuuri for Yuuri. No matter what.”

Yuuri took it—and then he took even more, falling into Victor’s arms, himself again. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry, _I’m sorry_ —“ He inhaled, sharply, the collar of Victor’s jinbei growing wet. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong! Just tell me, _please_ —!”

Victor held him like glass. “What do you mean? Why would you think you’re doing something wrong?”

Yuuri was gasping. “You’re—you’re _displeased_ with me. My jumps are never good enough. I can’t act like you well enough. My English is still terrible, and—and—I thought, like others, maybe you—“

Victor grasped at him, as though he was sand, slipping away. “You thought I was mad you weren’t _sleeping with me_?”

“You aren’t—?”

“Yuuri, have humans—?” Victor couldn’t even bring himself to say it.

Yuuri’s nails dragged down his clavicle. “When I enchant them… They always come after me. I don’t—I don’t _let them_ , but—“ He hiccupped. “They don’t love me. They love my tricks. No one’s ever loved _Yuuri_ Yuuri.”

Victor breathed heavily, against Yuuri’s temple. He drew the other back, remaining firm even when Yuuri resisted. “Yuuri, please look at me.” Reluctantly, he did. “What do you want me to be to you? A father figure? A brother? A friend?”

“N-no—“ Yuuri’s hands scrabbled for him, clutching at Victor’s face, a bit too forcefully. “I just want you to be Victor. _Victor_ Victor.”

Victor smiled, a tiny, wobbly thing. “And you promise to be _Yuuri_ Yuuri?”

“Yes—“

“Then we’re in agreement.” He pried Yuuri’s hands from their vice, intertwining the fingers. “You be you, and I’ll be me.” He coached his expression into something more stern, sudden edge injected into his tone: “And if you are worried about something, _ask me about it._ All right?”

Yuuri nodded, mutely, though wetness clung to the corners of his eyes. “So… I really am just bad at everything then? You weren’t mad at me not sleeping with you, so… It must be that I’m just failing. At everything.”

“No, Yuuri.” Victor gripped at Yuuri’s fingers, tighter. “I told you it’d be hard, this training—that it would take a lot of work. And I’ve kept my word. This is my style, my speed.” He sighed, full-bodied. “But perhaps it isn’t yours. You’re supposed to be playing me, but you’re _not me._ We don’t need to train like I do, if that’s not the method that works for you. So what would you prefer me to do? Please, be honest with me.”

Yuuri inched a bit forward, gazing at Victor from under his lashes. “I like praise,” he said, so simply. “Kitsune like to please people. We trick them, but… humans can be very charming, in their own odd, clumsy way.” He licked at his lip, minutely. “So please… take care of me?”

 _Don’t hurt him,_ Hiroko’s warning rang, crystalline, in Victor’s ears. How quickly he had accepted that condition, brushed over those words—the true, implicit meaning of them—and forgotten, like so many other meaningless things he’d put out of his mind over the years.

He’d fallen back into the routine and dragged Yuuri along with him. 

“I will,” Victor swore, with all the reverence of a prayer. “Though I have a favor to ask of you as well: Will you give me another chance?”

Yuuri blinked—then grinned, clear and bright. “You don’t even need to ask.”

* * *

“Beautiful, Yuuri!”

* * *

“Brilliant, Yuuri!”

* * *

“Lovely, Yuuri!”

* * *

“ _Yuuuuuu_ ri—“

* * *

“Again!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooooooookay. PROMISE, COMPETITIONS ARE NEXT CHAPTER.
> 
> (It's my birthday next week, so write me a comment...?)


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